2. Planning and Booking
(Short version: Ottawa + Montreal for a few days each. A week in Rio. A couple of days at Inhotim Institute near Belo Horizonte. Iguazu Falls. Fly home the looooong way via Toronto. The whole trip bookend with Jakarta stopovers).
+1 spent some time living in Ottawa and Montreal back in the early 2010s and for a while has been keen on going back for a bit of an extended trip to see old friends and visit stomping grounds, so my flight finding mission needed to include Canada as well as getting us to Rio for the wedding and 2 weeks of Brazil highlights. +1 would spend 3 weeks solo in Canada and I’ll join him in Ottawa for a few days, followed by a couple more days in Montreal.
I tried various multi-city and RTW fares, but generally hit roadblocks or got priced out by travelling between Canada and Brazil without a US transit.
I then remembered the presentation at first AFF masterclass which revealed ways of (legitimately) using generous stopover rules on many connecting long haul flights to build a creative itinerary that kind of takes advantage of hidden city pricing, but does so in a totally legitimate way, simply by knowing what the published fare rules explicitly, and often generously, allow.
Sadly I couldn’t get all the ducks to line up on a CX/QF itinerary that would have started from NAN (where we had plans to go anyway) to get to Canada, partly due to some complexities around the Canadian cities we wanted to fly in and out of and because the final SYD-NAN leg would have had to be flown around xmas which meant high prices.
So I moved on to another well known trick of searching for fares originating in SE Asia. PR had some very competitive fares from MNL - but they’re not oneworld (yet) and there were some less than ideal stopovers (as much as I like Manila). KUL was pricey. BKK so so, but options to get from SYD-BKK on points are scarce.
And so to Jakarta. Once I’d confirmed quite plentiful QFF Classic Reward availability for SYD-CGK-SYD on suitable dates I booked Cathay business class from CGK-HKG-YVR // YYZ-HKG-CGK for +1 who was going a few weeks ahead of me and CGK-HKG-YYZ-HKG-CGK for me. His business class fare started with a 5 and mine just tipped over $6k. Not cheap by any means but roughly half the price of simply booking SYD-HKG-YVR/YYZ on Cathay.
Next was deciding how to get from Canada to Brazil. We’d be flying out of Montreal which limited options a bit compared to Toronto. I first looked at both LifeMiles and Aeroplan availability. There were some Avianca flights if we were slightly flexible with dates around the wedding, but I didn’t relish paying business class miles for their Eurobusiness product on close to 12 hours of flying. There was a plethora of UA availability….but US transits are too much hassle, even during normal times. Aeroplan was showing redeemable seats on Air Canada but dynamic pricing meant that they were no cheaper than cash fares, even with their oft discounted miles purchase offers.
Eventually I settled on paying around $3k cash to fly business class on on COPA via Panama City. Narrow bodies all the way, but the YUL-PTY leg would be on a seat similar to QF or VA 737 business and the slightly longer PTY-GIG leg offers lie flat seats. So all up, we’re looking at a whisker over AUD9k (plus QF points) to fly the following international flights, all in Business Class:
SYD-CGK (QF41 - A330-200)
CGK-HKG (CX776 - A330-300)
HKG-YYZ (CX820 - A350-1000)
YYZ-YOW (AC448 - 737-8)
YUL-PTY (CM448 - 737-800)
GIG-PTY (CM215 - 737-9)
PTY-YYZ (CM470 - 737-800)
YYZ-HKG (CX829 - A350-900)
HKG-CGK (CX777 - A330-300)
CGK-SYD (QF42 - A330-200)
Separately I booked the following domestic flights In Brazil. All in Y, all booked through OTAs due to issues getting Azul and Gol websites to cooperate with an Australian credit card.
PTY-GIG (CM873 - 737-9)
SDU-CNF (AD4117 - E95)
CNF-VCP (AD4328 - E95)
VCP-IGU (AD2955 - A320)
IGU-GIG (G31861 - 737-800)
I’m anticipating some issues with checked luggage on the CNF-VCP-IGU Azul flights. The booking.com/GotoGate itinerary says luggage is included whereas MMB on the Azul website and app suggest we’ll be charged (again). We’ll see!
Planning how to spend a fortnight in a country the size of Brazil was hard. After flicking through lonely planet and reading some travel blogs, I ended up having a conversation with Claude. What emerged after a few tweaks and iterations was 6 days in and around Rio de Janeiro, fly to Belo Horizonte and spend two days rambling around the 1900 acre open air contemporary art gallery at
Inhotim, then spend 3 days at Iguazu Falls before another night near Rio Airport and our flight back to Toronto.
From there, we basically retrace our steps, this time travelling together YYZ-HKG-CGK. 3 nights in Jakarta at the spectacular looking Keraton Hotel and the final overnight QF flight back to Syd. All up I'm away for a month and +1 closer to two months.
